Netflix has a new movie called “The Bombardment”. It is a Danish film (with dubbed dialogue) that tells a fictional tale based on one of the greatest tragedies of collateral damage in WWII. I don’t recommend showing it in the classroom unless you want a class full of crying kids, but you should watch it at home because it is an excellent historical movie that is very accurate. Even though you don’t want to show the movie in class, it is a story that can be told in your WWII unit as an example of “the best laid plans…” and that war is hell on civilians.
Denmark was conquered by Germany in 1940. Hitler allowed the Danish government and King to operate normally, but with German intimidation. In 1943, the Germans ended the arrangement and occupied the country with the German military. A resistance movement quickly developed, but by 1945 the Gestapo had done a lot of damage to the underground. The resistance leaders begged the British to launch a bombing raid on Gestapo headquarters even though it would mean the deaths of resistance members held captive. The Shellhus (Shell House) was the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen. It held about 30 resistance members who were being tortured and also served as human shields to prevent an attack on the building. The British turned down the requests for that reason and also the mission would be very risky. The resistance was willing to sacrifice their own men to reverse the Gestapo’s successful campaign. Eventually, the RAF relented and green-lit Operation Carthage. On March 21, 1945 three waves of six Mosquito fighter-bombers escorted by P-51 Mustangs targeted the Shellhus. The approach was successful and the headquarters was hit, killing 55 Germans, 47 Danish employees, and 8 prisoners. 18 prisoners escaped and most of the documents were destroyed. The raid crippled Gestapo operations. Although 4 Mosquitoes and 2 Mustangs were lost, the mission would have been considered a smashing success but for the smash of one of the Mosquitos.
The unlucky Mosquito hit a lamp post and crashed into a garage near the Jeanne d’Arc School. The crash started a fire which caused some of the bombers from the second and third waves to disregard the mock-up of the city that they had been trained with and erroneously target the large building near the garage. The crews did not bother to ascertain which of the two buildings was the Shellhus. Two of the six bombers in the second wave and five of six in the third wave targeted the school with their two 500 delayed action bombs. (Ironically, if those planes had hit the Shellhus, none of those 18 escaped prisoners would have survived.) We can assume they would not have bombed a school if they had known, but the mistake was still inexcusable. Clearly one of the two buildings aflame had to be a civilian building. The bombs devastated the school at a time when it was full of students. Many were killed instantly by the bombs and others were buried under the rubble. 86 kids (out of 482) and 18 adults (mostly nuns) were killed. 67 students and 35 adults were injured. It was one of the worst friendly fire incidents in WWII. Unfortunately, every modern war seems to have a similar tragedy. P.S. Before you excuse Operation Carthage as a worthy mission that just had some bad luck, the P-51’s were armed with incendiary bombs and instructed to drop them on houses away from the Shellhus to create a diversion to help the prisoners escape. Several homes of innocent civilians were burned to the ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Carthage
https://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk/2013/12/06/operation-carthage-the-shell-house-raid-21st-march-1945/
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